2016 Shorty #4

[Mark Ingwersen]

After seeing the aftermath of last week's severe crash in the A open group, the rest of the event suddenly seemed unimportant. Thankfully, I hear Nicolas is on the mend!

This week the A group was decidedly smaller which seems to be typical halfway through the Shorty series. The riders were no less slow and everyone bolted from the start as usual. Everyone except me that is. Let's just say I was distracted and the last rider to leave the start. I was able to get past Dave and later Mark Buell to then gave chase to Greg who had an incredible start and was charging strong. I managed to get by him on the back climb but Greg was never far behind. My goal this week was to see how close I could stay with the younger riders who had blazing fast times last week (lap times in the mid 3 minutes!). I finally did get in front of Joe Williams and managed to not only keep, but increase a lead on him. A few times I saw that Greg was battling it out with Joe!

This week the wind played nice and the temperatures were much warmer. As the soil is drying out the lower singletrack is getting increasingly loose and new rocks are becoming exposed. Not sure if it was intentional or subliminal anymore, but I felt much slower through the start/ finish area and especially the ditch. On lap three, Teddy Hayden pushed his lead sled of an all mountain bike at a surprisingly brisk pace in front of me towards the hair pin switchback to the lower section and made a most unusual maneuver: a flick to the left, pointed uphill and whipped the tail around for a straight-line shot through the turn! I'm not sure it was any faster, but it looked like a ton of fun and super cool! In the end that cumbersome bike was not meant for this event and he fell back. I managed to keep ahead of Joe and would catch glimpses of him and Greg duking it out on their way to the finish. Greg had a super finish only two seconds behind Joe which I am sure Greg is happy about.

Congratulations to Greg on second place and also Jenny from the women's race for her first place. The two leading ladies had an intense battle to the finish that was fun to watch from as far away as the grassy hill I was viewing from. Another exciting afternoon at the Shorty!